Game Introductions
2 minute read
Every organization is a franchise. Every employee is a player. The question is whether anyone knows the score.
Welcome to CorporateBall, the league most professionals play, where organizations are franchises, employees are players, leaders are coaches, and consultants are scouts or agents. Unlike real sports, most of those involved in CorporateBall never see the score.
CorporateBall: The league most professionals actually play in—where organizations are franchises, employees are players, and leaders are coaches. Unlike real sports, most players never see their own score.
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"Stay with us, folks. We’re coming back from the break at a very interesting moment—actually, three of them, all at once."
"That’s right, Hal. Three different games, three different arenas. Flip between them fast enough and you start noticing they’re all running the same play."
"Down on the field in the first game, you’ve got a player—Marcus Reyes. Eleven years in the league, same franchise the whole time. Numbers are up. His work is holding a system together that would fall apart without him. He just walked out of a review holding a ‘Meets Expectations’ rating, passed over for a promotion nobody told him was open. He knows exactly what he produced this year. He just handed his coach a highlight reel and got scored on the parts she could see."
"That’s a painful position to be in."
"Second game—up in the coach’s box. Reid Montague. Six years running his team, and he just got an email asking him to justify every seat on his roster. Two weeks to build the case. He believes in his players. He doesn’t have a way to show what they’re worth in numbers his front office will accept. Worse—one of his best is already halfway out the door, and he can feel it happening."
"Second game—up in the coach’s box. Reid Montague. Six years running his team, and he just got an email asking him to justify every seat on his roster. Two weeks to build the case. He believes in his players. He doesn’t have a way to show what they’re worth in numbers his front office will accept. Worse—one of his best is already halfway out the door, and he can feel it happening."
"And the third?"
"Third game’s in the press box. Scout named Valentina Cruz. Twelve years finding what a franchise can’t see about itself. Good reputation, real results—right up until a CFO stopped her mid-engagement with a four-word question: ‘How do we know?’ She didn’t have an answer that fit in a column. He paused the whole contract."
"Three different fields. Same problem."
"Exactly. None of them have a scoreboard. Not one that shows them what they actually produce, proves what it’s worth, tells them how to produce more of it, or gets it in front of whoever’s deciding what happens next."
"Now that’s a story worth watching."
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